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Macworld Expo 2007 Predictions

Tuesday, 9 January 2007

Here are my predictions for what is going to be announced in the
keynote, ranked roughly in order of significance, not likelihood. My
gut feeling is that this is going to be a big one.

New User Interface Theme to Replace Aqua in 10.5 — The
Aqua theme is now 6 years old, which is a longer lifespan
than that of the Platinum theme from Mac OS 8 and 9. I expect
to see big changes, not the sort of refinements we’ve seen in
previous major Mac OS X updates. At a technical level, the
new UI will be resolution independent. At a design level, it
will elicit both a lot of love and a lot of hate, just like
Aqua did in 10.0. The subtext will be to make Windows Vista
look dated before it even ships to consumers.

iPod Mobile Phone — Even just a few days ago, I
did not expect to see Apple announce a phone this week. But
over the weekend I flip-flopped, and I now think it’s more
likely than not. Not a VOIP phone that depends on Wi-Fi or
anything like that, but an honest-to-god mobile phone. It
seems like there has to be some sort of “Wow, I thought maybe
Apple would announce a phone but I didn’t think they’d do it
like this!” factor, but damned if anyone knows what it is.
My wild unlikely-but-wouldn’t-it-be-cool-as-shit guess: that
it’s not an iPod phone, but rather the introduction of a new mobile
device OS.

New MacBook Pro Form Factor — Good-bye, anodized Aluminum,
hello something new that plays off the design cues of the new
Mac OS X user interface mentioned above. The
red/yellow/green/blue candy-colored transparent elements of
Aqua resemble the hardware from the old G3 iMacs and Power
Macs. The aluminum PowerBooks (and, now, MacBook Pros) are
the hardware counterpart to good old Brushed Metal windows.
Apple’s new machines are going to be designed to look best
running the new user interface.

New Sub-Compact MacBook — It’s currently a gaping hole
in their notebook line-up. Look for it to be a “pro” model,
in terms of both price and industrial design (i.e. looking
like a smaller sibling to the afore-predicted new MacBook
Pros, not the MacBooks.) Could be the “One More Thing”.

Absolutely Nothing That Involves the Word ‘Tablet’

iTV, Along With Apple-Branded Flat Screen TVs With iTV
Built-In — Why settle for selling a $299 TV peripheral
when you can sell two- or three-thousand-dollar TVs with iTV
built-in? Also, my guess is that the guts of iTV consist of a
Mac Mini-like computer running a specialized version of Mac
OS X. I say this despite agreeing with Steven Frank’s rule
of thumb that rumors which contain the phrase “stripped-down
version of Mac OS X” are almost certainly false.

Dual Quad-Core Mac Pros — Now that Intel has officially
announced their Core 2 Quad processors, this one almost seems
like a gimme, but I called for it last week, too.